App Store will Start Subscriptions on Apps

It will not be entirely free anymore. Developers are tapped to do payment to update. Users are to pay to subscribe to apps for some time period. Bad news.

Phil Schiller foresees Apple losing money from the current revenue sharing model with developers despite the fact that the App Store still rakes so much revenue from its fewer downloads than Google’s Play Store. To prevent this “loss” Schiller revealed that developers can soon activate app access subscriptions on their software from any category including games. The company will still take 30% of the revenue but here’s the catch, Apple will just take 15% per transaction if the user keeps subscription to certain apps for more than a year. Developers now have the power to have paywalls for access on some features of the app or the entire app.

However, Schiller said that they will evaluate what will be a better experience for the user and make choices based on that evaluation. It’s not far fetched to have a pay-to-update that developers have been pushing on for quite a while.

Other updates to the App Store includes the re-entry of the Categories tab, a cleaner Featured tab minus the apps you already installed and a 3D Touch-activated app recommendations.

The WWDC is on June13 and this subscription model will launch on that same day.